Aspen airport expansion and the coronavirus

Huge parallels between the novel coronavirus and the county airport. The lesson from the former is that with constant exponential growth, policy needs to change, so we pull back and wear masks. We move forward based on the data telling us if it is up or down.

The data set for the airport includes 2019 weather and geophysical changes, and plenty is up. The ocean’s salinity and temperature reached new heights. Air temperature too. Ice melting is up as is permafrost thawing. Greenland alone lost hundreds of billions of tons of ice in 2019. So, it is time to pull back from a plan that sees an 18% increase in operating GHG emissions and ignores the carbon cost of demo. Moving good pavement shouldn’t be taken lightly.

If Tesla can build a giga-factory from shovel to production in less than a year, a replacement terminal building could go up pretty quick. Now would be a good time. What good is a wider runway if you don’t have a good planet to put it on?

Tom Mooney

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